Stolen Harvest for Hunger Van Found in Ault

Aspen —The gravel crunches under tires as a white van idles beside a rusted railroad track in Ault, Colorado. It’s a quiet stretch of the Front Range, far removed from the jagged peaks of the San Juans. For two weeks, this unassuming vehicle sat there, unnoticed until a routine plate check flagged it as stolen.

That vehicle is “Little Larry,” the workhorse van for Harvest for Hunger, a local nonprofit based in Snowmass. The van was taken from Lot 1 in Snowmass Village on the night of Sept. 19, around 10:30 p.m. Since then, the organization has been scrambling to keep its food rescue operations running with just one vehicle.

Little Larry is central to the group’s mission. Since joining the fleet in 2021, the van has helped rescue between 3,500 and 4,000 pounds of food every week. With it missing for a month, the strain was palpable. “Since it’s been gone for the last month, we’ve been having to put everything in the one van,” said Gray Warr, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director. “Doing all of that in the one van was a bit stressful.”

The recovery happened on Oct. 9, when Snowmass Police traveled to Greeley to secure the vehicle and gather evidence. By Sunday evening, Little Larry was back in Snowmass, ready to resume work. The condition of the van was surprisingly good. There was no visible damage, and nothing appeared to have been removed from the interior. The only issues were mechanical: the tank was nearly empty, and the battery was dead because a strobe light had been left on.

Dave Heivly, the assistant police chief in Snowmass, noted that the vehicle had been sitting in Ault for a couple of weeks before local authorities ran the plates. The fact that the van was intact suggests the thief wasn’t interested in stripping parts, but the motive remains unclear.

Heivly pointed out that vehicle thefts are rare in the area. Only two cars were reported stolen this year, and both have been recovered. “I don’t remember a year where we’ve had more than that,” Heivly said. “Safe to say we’re not setting any crime trends this year with two motor vehicle thefts.”

Despite the happy ending for the van, the investigation is still in its early stages. No suspect has been identified, and there is no clear motive. “This is where the investigation sort of starts for us,” Heivly explained. “We try to track things as we can, but a lot of times we have to be patient and wait for a lead to come in. This is where it’ll really take off for us to try to develop a suspect.”

For now, the focus is on getting back to normal. Warr expressed relief that the van is home. “Little Larry’s return is ‘great,’” he told The Aspen Times, adding that it “allows us to go back to normal operating procedures.” The van is already back in service, hauling food to those who need it, leaving behind the mystery of who stole it and why.